It is well known that the pelvic regions in women's bodies can exhibit wide variation. Some women have large bladders and short vaginas, while others have long or wide-set vaginal canals with tiny bladders. Some women are large, others quite petite. Vaginal canals can be conical in shape, cylindrical, rectangular, or “slug-shaped”. Some women have ovarian cysts, fibroids, or congenital defects, such as, uterine septa. Over time, women's bodies also change. For instance, over a course of hours, bladders fill up and then empty. Over the course of many years, vaginal muscles weaken, and vaginal and uterine prolapse can occur.
During menstruation, all these anatomical differences can be quite important. In the prior art, tampon design has typically focused on improving and controlling absorbency on the one hand and insertion/removal comfort on the other. But these are not the only factors in designing a tampon. Designing a tampon to ensure both protection against leakage of menstrual fluid as well as wearer comfort to accommodate such large anatomical variations as exhibited in women, is a challenge that feminine care technology has not yet quite met. With today's current tampon offerings, women's choices are limited and, in some instances, inadequate to achieve these goals.
To illustrate the various anatomical variations and resulting tampon pledget placement variations, an MRI study was conducted. MRI images are provided in FIGS. 1 and 2 for two different women. The woman whose MRI image appears in FIG. 1 had a tampon pledget 10 inserted up much higher, above her bladder 12, and did complain of leakage. The woman whose MRI image appears in FIG. 2 had a tampon pledget 14 inserted low, below a midpoint of her bladder 16, with significant absorption of menses. These MRI's suggest that if a tampon pledget is positioned too far up a user's vaginal cavity, there is possible bypass leakage, and if the tampon pledget is placed too low in the vaginal cavity, the user may experience discomfort or the pledget may even fall out.
Referring to FIG. 3, another MRI view of a tampon pledget in a woman's body is shown. As this coronal scan shows, the pledget 18 is almost horizontal and oriented almost at a right angle to the source of menstrual bleeding, the cervical os 20. Clearly, pledget 18 is placed up too high in the user's vaginal fornix. The pledget is not oriented below the cervical os 20, and as a result leakage is likely to occur, mainly because of gravity.
To complement the MRI data, inspection of used tampon pledgets suggests that absorption often occurs only on one side of the pledget, including when a woman complains of leakage. It is likely that the pledget was not properly placed inside the vagina, since most of the discoloration is on one side. If the pledget were better positioned with respect to the cervical os, absorption would be more uniform throughout the pledget, and leakage may likely be prevented.
In view of the above, tampon pledget placement is clearly affected by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, a woman's habits and practices, age, anatomical differences, weight, pressure of surrounding tissues, especially the bladder, colon and/or pelvic floor, or any combination of factors thereof. Therefore, there remains a need in the art for a tampon assembly that provides proper bodily placement of a tampon pledget.
The present invention meets this need and provides a variety of means to ensure that tampon pledgets are properly placed in a woman's vagina resulting in enhanced leakage protection and/or improved wearing comfort.